As a career martial arts instructor and school owner, it is easy to get stuck in the same routine. Clean the mats, return phone calls, check emails, handle customer service issues, write out some class plans, and go teach. What happens is when tend to fall into a comfort zone. A place where we do, more or less, the minimum effort to achieve our short term goals and complete our daily tasks. This makes life more comfortable, less risky, and also, less rewarding.

What does this have to do with launching an Ultimate Bo program in your martial arts school? By injecting new life into your school, via an exciting new class and add-on program, you will be keeping it fresh. Your students will have something new to work toward or to begin training in. They will become more well-rounded martial artists, you will improve your own understanding of weapons combat, and will have fun and grow your business along the way.

It doesn’t have to be hard, confusing, or expensive. Then it would not be worth even attempting. At the core, martial arts school owners choose to add the Ultimate Bo program to their school for the love of the arts, for the love of being a white belt again, for the love of training, sparring, and fellowship.

What is Ultimate Bo?

Ultimate Bo is the world’s only white to black level officially recognized style bo instructional style. The founder and head instructor, Michael Hodge, wanted to create an organized training system that would give his students a clear training path. Rather than just teaching a few random katas here, and some sparring drills there; he organized an entire syllabus. The Ultimate Bo style is rooted in Okinawan bojutsu, with influence from staff styles from around the world. Students learn traditional techniques, a traditional kata, and realistic combat bo at every level. Sparring (free sparring and competition sparring) is a big part of the program, and can lead to tournament and practical self defense training. Ultimate Bo is very accessible, for both children and adults. The bo was recently found in an industry report to be the most popular martial arts weapon in the world.

Why should you launch a bo staff weapons program in your school, namely Ultimate Bo?

You’ll create a buzz and a newfound excitement within your student base. Everyone will be dying to attend Ultimate Bo class. School owners quickly find that Ultimate Bo becomes the most popular class, beating out their core traditional program!

In my experience, once students reach the intermediate level and early advanced belts, they are more susceptible to dropping out. They feel, “Is this all there is?”, “Why do we keep doing the same thing over and over again?”, “Ah…new white belts, now we have to review again.” By having a new program to enter, they can begin a new rank journey from white to black chevron, all while continuing in their core program.

Ultimate Bo is an official ranking system. Your students get to display their chevron patch rank on their gi sleeve. They will obtain new and higher levels of mastery at each chevron.

You can charge a sizeable monthly fee for the new Ultimate Bo class. All students will buy a bo upon signing up, a sparring bo a little later on, and can even upgrade to a competition bo in the advanced stages. Along with mini camps, tournaments, and other opportunities to generate revenue from the course. You can easily add a $1,000-$5,000 to your monthly revenue immediately (depending on your school’s size).

Differentiate your school from the competition. How many schools in your area teach weapons, let alone have a complete ranking system and curriculum to black belt?

There is no monthly or yearly licensing fee. This is an extremely affordable, low-cost way to add a robust, ready-out-of-the-box program to your school.

How to Add Ultimate Bo to Your School

If you are a black belt instructor, even without any bo experience, you can get started now. Clearly, we are going to make sure you first learn and master the bo material as a student before you begin running your own classes. Our world-class online martial arts university course, the Global Martial Arts University Ultimate Bo course, will teach you all of the curriculum in a simple step-by-step format. So, here is what you need to do.

Begin learning the yellow chevron curriculum (basics, stances, traditional bo, kata, and combat bo). You can train on any device, at any time, with or without a partner.

Go ahead and purchase the Ultimate Bo Instructor Certification Course. This includes all instructional videos on how to teach Ultimate Bo classes, planning classes, testing students, a full live example class, and more.

Once you have earned your blue chevron in Ultimate Bo via the GMAU, you will be eligible to take your instructor certification exam. Your instructor test can be taken by submitting video(s) for grading.

Once you pass the certification, you will be mailed your official instructor certificate, and can open your own official Ultimate Bo class in your school.